President Trump
will ask the Congress for cuts to many federal programs, and more money
to bulk up defense spending. Trump’s budget outline is a blueprint
covering just “discretionary” spending for the 2018 fiscal year starting
on October 1.

It boosts spending for defense, homeland security and
veterans’ affairs; the Defense Department budget would increase by $54
billion, which will raise defense spending to $639 billion for fiscal
year 2018.

The Environmental Protection Agency faces cuts of 31% and the
Department of Agriculture would see funding cuts more than 20; State
Department 28%; Health and Human Services would be cut 16%; Education
faces cuts of 14%.

Trump’s budget proposes eliminating discretionary
funding altogether for at least 19 agencies and 61 other programs. Plans
for new NASA missions, climate change research, aid for low-income
families, funding for commercial flights to rural airports, public
broadcasting, and Meals on Wheels would all be on the chopping block.

The spending cuts that Trump proposes come from those agencies that
fund education programs, social services, environmental protection,
health research, housing and food assistance, national parks, land
management, and countless other endeavors. As it is, spending on non-defense discretionary programs is already historically low.

As a
share of the economy it’s at its lowest level since 1998 and is well
below where it was 50 years ago, per data from the
Congressional Budget Office. The net effect is no change in the national
deficit. The budget proposal is the first volley in what is expected to
be an intense battle over spending in coming months in Congress.

President Trump’s
second travel ban was blocked by a federal court in Hawaii hours before
it was to go into effect. A federal judge in Maryland also ruled
against the ban on the day it was supposed to take effect. The
administration has promised to appeal the rulings.

The speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, the Senate Intelligence
Committee chairman and the ranking Democrat on the committee all said
that they’ve seen no evidence
of President Donald Trump’s accusation that he was wiretapped last year
by his predecessor.

Senate Intelligence Committee chair Richard Burr
and ranking member Mark Warner issued a statement, saying “based on the
information available to us, we see no indications that Trump Tower was
the subject of surveillance by any element of the United States
government either before or after Election Day 2016.”

House Speaker Paul Ryan said that “no such wiretap existed,” citing
intelligence reports to House leaders. “We don’t have any evidence,” says the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee. “No evidence,” says his
Democratic counterpart.

The statement from the leaders of the Senate
Intelligence Committee marks the clearest and strongest refutation of
Trump’s allegations since the President first made them two weeks ago.
The senators statement also addresses Trump’s more recent statement that
he was not merely speaking about wiretapping specifically.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte
defeated far-rightist Geert Wilders in the first of a series of
European elections this year in which populist insurgent parties are
hoping to rock the establishment. The center-right prime minister had
trailed in opinion polls for much of the campaign but emerged the clear
victor of Wednesday’s election, albeit with fewer seats than before.

It’s rare for a Dutch election to attract international attention, but the
performance of Wilders is being seen as a bellwether for the ascent of
populism around Europe, particularly with the National Front’s Marine Le
Pen set to reach the run-off in the French presidential election late
next month. Germans will vote later in the year.

The Bank of Japan
is sticking with its ultra-loose monetary policy even as the Federal
Reserve tightens. Japan’s economy is recovering with the help of a
weaker yen but growth and inflation remain low. The Bank of Japan to
keep its target for 10-year Japanese government bond yields at around
zero, a policy it calls “yield-curve control.” It left the
short-term interest rate on some yen deposits held by commercial banks
at minus 0.1%.

The Bank of England
held interest rates at the record low level of 0.25 percent and
maintained asset purchases at £435 billion. The UK economy has shown
strength since last June’s Brexit referendum and the government revised
its forecasts for domestic growth in 2017 sharply higher. That might be
wishful thinking.

The UK has not yet felt the full impact of Brexit,
but that doesn’t mean they won’t. The big question is whether London’s
financial institutions will lose access to the single market of the Euro
Union after the UK leaves the EU.

The main argument is as follows:
since London plays a key financial role in Europe, any disruption would
endanger the financing of the EU economy and would ultimately pose
a threat to financial stability in the bloc.

My guess is that argument
plays better in London than Brussels. That’s not just speculation. The
number of new available jobs listed in the UK’s financial center fell
17% in February year-on-year to 6,945. Or simply, Brexit is Brexit.

Yesterday, the Federal Open Market Committee
voted to raise the range of the federal funds rate to 0.75% and 1.00%,
citing progress in labor market growth, business fixed investment and
inflation. The Fed indicated they are still looking at 2 more rate hikes
in 2017, which matches the guidance they provided in December.

In a
press conference yesterday, Fed Chair Janet Yellen said, “The simple
message is, the economy is doing well. We have confidence in the
robustness of the economy and its resilience to shocks.”

The labor market has been a strong part of the economic recovery. In
the last monthly jobs report, the unemployment rate dropped to 4.7%, but
one weak spot was wages, which have flatlined. Once again, adjusted for
inflation, there has likely been no growth whatsoever in real wages
YoY.

For wages to increase, workers need job mobility, the ability to
take a new job for more pay. Each month the Labor Department publishes
the JOLT survey, or Job Openings and Labor Turnover; and in January, the
number of Americans quitting their jobs rose to
a seasonally-adjusted total of 3.22 million, the highest number since
February 2001. The quits rate rose in January to 2.2%.

People quitting
their jobs in droves is a sign of confidence among workers, as
folks are unlikely to quit a job unless they are confident they can get
another one. Openings totaled 5.63 million in January, above the prior
month’s reading of 5.5 million.

The Labor Department said initial claims for state unemployment benefits
dropped 2,000 to a seasonally adjusted 241,000 for the week ended March
11. It was the 106th straight week that claims remained below 300,000, a
threshold associated with a healthy labor market. That is the longest
stretch since 1970, when the labor market was much smaller.

US home-building
jumped in February as unseasonably warm weather helped boost the
construction of single-family houses to near a 9-1/2-year high. Housing
starts increased 3% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.29 million
units last month.

Home-building was up 6.2 percent compared to February
2016. Single-family home-building, which accounts for the largest share
of the residential housing market, surged 6.5%. Starts for the volatile
multi-family housing segment fell 3.7%.

The Arizona Supreme Court
has upheld the constitutionality of Arizona’s minimum wage increase to
$10 an hour. Voters approved the increase in November, and the challenge
was brought by the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry and other
business groups.

The state Supreme Court unanimously rejected the
challenge. Proposition 206 raised the state’s minimum wage to $10 an
hour in January 2017. Incremental increases continue until 2020, when it
will increase to $12.

Four people have been indicted
in a 2014 cyber-attack on Yahoo email accounts. The indictment charges
two officers of the FSB, Russia’s Federal Security Service, and two
hackers who allegedly worked together with them to crack 500 million
Yahoo user accounts.

Cyber security specialists have long said the
Kremlin employs criminal hackers for its geostrategic purposes. They say
the arrangement offers deniability to Moscow and freedom from legal
troubles for the hackers.

Adobe Systems stock jumped after the company delivered earnings and revenue that beat expectations.

Cold weather luxury apparel retailer Canada Goose’s stock rocketed 25 percent in its first day of trading. The stock trades under the ticker GOOS.

Amazon
is ready to do to the local liquor store what it did to the local book
store. It is rolling out free beer and wine 2-hour delivery and $7.99
1-hour delivery for Prime Now members, starting in Cincinnati and
Columbus, Ohio.

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